Only In America! By Dr. Wumi Akintide

The presidential election has added yet another feather to the uniqueness of America. It is about the only country with the exception of Nigeria where you have as many as 22 individuals in one Party vying to become the nominee of their Party. How quickly they drop out one by one is also unique to America. In Nigeria, candidates dig in to qualify for any stipend that may come to them from the Electoral Commission. Many in Nigeria are in the race not to win at all but to qualify for that stipend or some high visibility position in the State or Party after their loss. Can you believe that?

by Dr. Wumi AkintideFeb 24, 2016

The presidential election has added yet another feather to the uniqueness of America. It is about the only country with the exception of Nigeria where you have as many as 22 individuals in one Party vying to become the nominee of their Party. How quickly they drop out one by one is also unique to America. In Nigeria, candidates dig in to qualify for any stipend that may come to them from the Electoral Commission. Many in Nigeria are in the race not to win at all but to qualify for that stipend or some high visibility position in the State or Party after their loss. Can you believe that?

Dr. Wumi Akintide
Dr. Wumi Akintide

It is a different ball game in America. Candidates enter the race because they believe they have something to offer. However, if their showing in the polls indicate they are not popular with voters then they drop out. Jeb Bush, the favorite of the Republican Establishment, quickly saw the handwriting on the wall following the outcome of the South Carolina primary that gave him only 4 percent of the total tally.

America remains a jigsaw puzzle, all things considered. Who would have believed some 10 years ago that a man like Donald Trump and a self-proclaimed Socialist could rise this high in the polls to pick a nominee for each of two dominant Parties in America? Nothing is written in stone in American Politics.

I just love America. I persuaded two of my sons to become part of the American success story by following the footsteps of their grandfather a veteran of the Royal West African Frontier Force who fought under the British flag in the Second World War in Egypt, Ceylon and India from 1939 to 1945.

The uniqueness of America is what informed my decision to write this piece at a time I feel so frustrated about making predictions on American politics because the menu has drastically changed. Donald Trump seems to have changed the ground rules because “Let us make America great again” which is the clarion call of Donald Trump has meant different things to different people.

For blacks and other minorities in America, it could mean a return to the not so pleasant past when the highest job a black man can ever hold in the White House is that of a gatekeeper.

Today the white man opens the gate for the black man’s Limousine to come in. That could be part of what Donald Trump is promising after such a glorious outing by the first black President in more than 250 years of America’s Independence. If Trump becomes the Republican nominee, blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities have another day with destiny in America and that is why I or people like me can never vote for a Donald Trump even with a gun pointed at our head. It is that simple.

Miracles happen in America all the time because miracles are in America’s DNA and life blood. I laugh when I hear Donald Trump say to the world he is going to make America great again as if to say that America has ever stopped being a great country since 1776. Jefferson William Clinton the 42nd President of the United States put it best when he calls the bluff of Donald Trump telling him that America has never at any time lost her uniqueness but that America’s best days are still ahead of her.

Donald Trump is, therefore, turning the truth on its head to claim he is going to make America great again unless he meant it in the way I have earlier on mentioned above. He should go tell that to the mountains.

America already has enough military and economic power to deter competition or aggression from any country in the world. Any new President can only enhance that greatness by what they do just like Hillary is promising to do. No one President however powerful or benevolent can solve all the problems of America as a world leader. Every President can only do but so much. They come to office play their part in trying to make the Union more perfect by breaking new frontiers that build on the progress already put in place by the old and current generation of American leaders.

To be talking of making America great again or talking of a revolution after Obama’s tenure is to suggest that Obama has failed which is totally false. The only person telling the truth between Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders is Hillary Clinton who admits that Obama has performed and has refused to be a lame duck President that Trump and Bernie Sanders would want to make him. That he is busy right now getting ready to nominate the replacement for Justice Scalia and his decision to finally close Gitmo is one clear proof of that. He has the constitutional right to do so and would remain President and proactively so till the new President Hillary is sworn in on a date certain on January 2017.

Donald Trump is going to set in motion the most dangerous Arms Race the World has ever known if he becomes the Republican nominee and if by any accident he goes on to be elected President.

While President Obama and the Democrats have tried in 8 years to prevent the proliferation of deadly weapons around the World, Donald Trump’s policies are going to endanger the peace of the World and start another arms race the World does not need and does not deserve.

That is going to be a panacea for fear and instability that America cannot afford. Why should we fix America, if it is not broken. America and the whole world have, so far, used the United Nations and the International Court at the Hague to maintain peace and stability around the world by rooting for collaboration rather than conflict.

Why bring a Donald Trump who says he is not coming to build on the “status quo” but coming to rock the boat.

That said, let me now briefly address the main focus of this write-up. Whenever you think America has reached the end of the road something happens that fundamentally turns the whole situation around for America like no other country on Earth.

What is of great interest to me in this article is the limitless manpower resources of America from one generation to another. America is so great that the great generation that Tom Brokaw talks so much about in his bestseller has indeed captured my fancy as I set out to write this article.

When John F Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, the young President had already reproduced himself before his death. There came a John F Kennedy Junior who was bare 2 to 3 years old by the time the father died. The little boy threw a salute to his father as his casket was being moved around for a state burial at Arlington Cemetery.

The little boy not only studied the law, like his father, he grew up to be a star like his father. If he had not died in a plane crash, he was on his way to being elected the junior Senator from New York and he would have one day run for President just like his father. Only in America.

His plane plunged to the sea and other less scientifically equipped country would never have searched for the wreckage of his plane or looked for his body. But President Clinton ordered for the body to be retrieved even if it means spending the last dime on it and the country did. Only in America.

America is something else. Here is a country in which a Missouri Senator who was running to be Governor died in a plane crash few weeks before the election and he still managed to beat the Attorney-General of the United States who ran against him. You don’t count anybody out in America. As crazy as Donald Trump sounds just imagine how much he has challenged all the old assumptions about presidential politics in America, saying things that would be considered a heresy in the past.

The guy has rewritten all of the rules of the game and has gotten away with it.

It would have been far much easier for a Bozo to be President of the United States than for Donald Trump to emerge as President. Donald Trump believes the greatest attribute of a President should be that of a negotiator or a snake oil salesman with a sugar-coated tongue. Donald Trump wants to win at all times and could care less about what happens to his opponent on the negotiating table. That is what makes him a big security risk to America in my judgment.

I give one more example of the uniqueness of America with the two sons of Mario Cuomo. Their father the 3-term former Governor of New York. His eldest son, Andrew Cuomo, a chip of the old block, is today the Governor of New York like his father. His second son Chris Cuomo an ace reporter with the CNN is a carbon copy of his father in intelligence and the gift of the garb.

The late Mario Cuomo is one politician who can melt a stone with his eloquence in the English language even though he was “an Italian guy from Queens” like late Justice Antonin Scalia. Every day I watch Chris Cuomo moderate the various Town Hall conversations with all of the individuals running for President in this election year. The young man reminds me of his great father, Mario Cuomo who has been a keynote speaker at political Conventions of the Democrats for more than two times because he was that gifted and talented. I regret that the man turned down the offer to run for President.

Only in America do I regularly find these kinds of stories that regularly touch my heart as I pray to have some wonderful children like those I have cited in this article.

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